The circumference of Victoria is pretty substantial. I think that even if entry is impossible, there'll be an awful lot of observation made from its rim. At least 180 degrees, I'd think. Should take an awful long time; we'll see if the rover outlives that.

exactly Sunspot!

as tempting and exciting the Beagle Crater site is, I'm afraid that we just have to set priorities
(because of the limited remaining rover life time and the risk of a fatal hardware failure
any time we can not afford to spent too much time and/or risk at Beagle ..

So priority one has to be Victoria, as also repeatedly stated by Steve Squyres ...
I opt for a rather reserved Beagle campaing (i.e. not longer than
2 weeks and without taking any risks of driving into difficult terrain)

Then on to Victoria as fast and safe as possible ... saving all our remaining time and risks for the
Great Victoria Science Campaing there

The situation with the limited remaining life time is that, in essence, we have to to ask ourself
for every single Sol that we are not driving towards Victoria: is it really better to spend this Sol doing science here or at Victoria ... I'm sure the reward of doing the latter will outweigh the price of losing some sols of routine observations along the way ...

That said, I'm sure Begale is worth one or two weeks of investigations too .. then one additional stop
on the Apron terrain ... and we could be at Victoria as early as mid September ...

Yes - command every day as if it's the last....BUT....there could be excellent science here. If it takes two weeks to do a good investigation of a few pieces of Beagle crater - they'd be mad to turn it down. If nothing else - it's a point of reference between the Erebus area and Victoria - another point on the graph that started with Eagle and will end with Victoria. I think a verbose investigation is more than justified.

Doug

I have analyzed the best paths to Beagle which are two. Both of them aren't any complicated and are easier than the ones which Oppy did around the Endurance crater. Then, the path to BC isn't any difficult terrain but in the other words is to drive with some caution and the way is perfectly passable specially on the South-West side of Beagle Crater. The other is ok is on the East-South. There is other good path to approach to BC comming from the North-East but it will be confirmed after a better imaging of terrain.

My philosophy is to take advantage whenever the Oppy is able. If you want to keep it safe from BC for arrinving to Victoria, then, what happens if on the way to Victoria, Oppy becomes impaired for any reason?

Rodolfo

Nirgal, superb navcam panorama!

>I think a verbose investigation is more than justified.

Very well put, Doug. Every crater we are able to examine is like a roadcut giving us a view of the subsurface. Even though etched plain where Beagle was created _may_ be jumbled and disrupted compared to Eagle, Endurance or Erebus, the Beagle impact did bring to the surface (apparently) different rock types than we've been driving over and these are valuable. Yet another important point along trhe traverse.

--Bill

Who wants still to go in here?

http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...YKP0666L0M1.JPG

Click to view attachment

Ooh, a sandbox. Looks like fun. Seriously, I don't see it being a problem for Opportunity to navigate the inner edges of Beagle.

Let's take a lap - take several days worth of pics and move on to the grand prize.

Missing Victoria would be very very tough at this point.

---ups

The navcams.

What a wonderful assortment of "float". You can even see a light-toned ray extending to the south-ish from Beagle. What are the dark-toned areas on the crater rim?

Hawg-heaven.

--Bill

Nothing amazing - just a bit of enhancement on one of the closer rocks to the pancam, but anything on Mars is special really.

Thanks for the beautiful pan, James!

One tip for navcam mosaics: The right navcam images always look quite a bit cleaner than the left (especially on smooth areas such as sky). I'm not sure why this is; perhaps they use higher compression on the left, although the "noise" in the left navcams doesn't look like the usual ICER compression artifacts.

Take a good look at Beagle, boys and girls -- this is likely the last *small* Martian crater we will look at from the rim for a while...

-the other Doug

Your right - good tip. How strange. I never noticed that before.

Don't usually play with the navcams (only doing it now while I help out with the route map) just pancams, and use the left out of habit.

Thanks,

James

I'm baffled by the latest (sol 896) pancam shots - they're pointing back towards Jesse Chisholm. Any thoughts on this?

In the recent Planetary Society rover update here, Ray Arvidson says they want to investigate the rays.

"Arvidson said. "Beagle crater features ejecta rays [areas of ejecta that look like rays in the orbital images], so we'll explore some of those first, then we'll climb onto the ejecta apron or annulus of Victoria and drive across toward the northwest portion of Victoria.""

The pancam drive direction set is looking generally toward that ray, so I suspect they may have seen enough of this little puppy, and are ready to move on with the rest of the program.

(edit: P.S. Thanks MMB Man for your timely metadata update! )

Me too, and they *are* called "Drive Direction" pancams in the tracking database.

I have no idea why they would do a drive in one direction and then, in the same sequence, take drive direction pancams back the other way!

I suspect that someone has made a mistake in the sequence and those pancams should be 180 degrees the other way -- oops!

James

No problem - I am, of course, glued to the screen.

We can see a ray in the navcams extending off of the right edge of Beagle - that's the one at the 5 o'clock position in the orbital map.

We're currently sitting on (or very nearly on) the ray at the 7 o'clock position (see James's latest route map).

The pancam set looks above the 7 o'clock ray back to Chisholm. Perhaps we're going to head back past Chisholm and continue on to the extremely bright outcrop to the southwest.

Here's a half-polar made from James's very nice pan.

Phil

Click to view attachment

Well, let me take a second look...

We don't need to go in to the central dune field to investigate the place We didn't go into the dunes at the middle of Endurance for instance..but investigated its rocks very carefully - plenty of opportunity to investigate some good layers of rock here...I still think they should ( and will ) take a good look.

Doug

Looking at Phil's demi-polar, based on James' Navcam panorama, I especially get the impression that Beagle was created upon the mega-breccia of Victoria's ejecta apron, as first noted by dvandorn. The dark areas I noticed on the rim of Beagle appear to be areas of dark ejecta, like the hillocks.

I also see a couple of the solution cavity/remineralization that we noticed on the "Eagle Skull".

There is a lot to look at here.

--Bill

Hang on, hang on...

(sound of Stu frantically flicking through new Geology Dictionary...)

Ah... mmm....

(more flicking...)

Got it.

I must admit I thought Beagle was going to be pretty boring, but it looks fascinating. Don't fancy Oppy driving down into that big bad bunker down in the bottom there, but the rocks and blocks on the rim slopes look intriguing. The next week or so is going to give us (well, some of you!) lots of great images to play with.

I highlighted this fact a lot of time ago in this Forum (see the "left vs right" thread) and I encouraged all members to ALWAYS use right images (as I do from the beginning of MER mission)... but fews are following this raccomandation
Note that this effect is often visible in PanCam too!
Nobody knows the reason, perhaps difference is somehow relate to the reversed CCD package on the "camera bar" or the compression used onboard the rover...

Thanks a lot for this valuable hint re. the better quality of the right eye frames
... unfortunately I must have missed this up to now
... have been using motsly the left eye frames out of habit...

dilo, do you know if the right eye frames are also better for the calibrated images at the PDS site (MER analysts notebook) or if this is just an issue with the compressed JPGs ?

(... looks like I will have to redo most of my work with the other frame set

P.S.: -> follow up to the tech&Imagery board section

done.

Meanwhile, here a (rightcam) stretched stitch of Sol896 Panorama showing Beagle and the distant, final target!
(note also the "twin peak" belonging to the 35 Km far crater...)

how bizarre

This is strange. I may be jumping the gun by not waiting for Pancams or closer Navcams, but I noticed this on the first set of Navcams of the interior of Beagle. This image is a crop and 3x stretech of the far wall and sand ripples and shows, apparently, a couple of mini-craters in the sand. Light is from the upper left, and if you want to see the image un-stretched, resize it horizontal=100% and vertical=33%.

I may be wrong, but it "sho does look like a duck"...

--Bill

here is a colorized navcam view.



and an isolated crop of Beagle Crater:



This time I tried to deliberately reduce contrast and color variance to more realistically match
the mood of calibrated pancam images like those published by JPL or on slinted's great site.

To capture this "darkish" slightly hazy "martian feeling" one would probably get from standing
on the surface ...

However I think that the human eye/brain would soon adapt to the more narrow range of colors and
contrast ... which then results in a more contrast rich subjective vision again ... but who knows until
we finally stand there

Well, there's a way to test that -- someone could design "Mars glasses" -- tinted dark glasses that alter both the intensity and color of Earth sunlight to approximate that perceived on the Martian surface. Then we could all try wearing them for a week and see what happens.

Very Nice Colorised Navcam Nirgal. The sky rendering is very good

I'd try to make my own color navcam from pancam picture.

Is it just a trick of the lighting angle, or is the approach to the NW corner really, really free of ripples of any consequence?

Brian

The Beagle Crater is a very interesting thing which are:

1) There is a coincidence that Beagle with Endurance Crater have the surface of the inside crater with plannar stones. I am trying to figure out about how these surface were initially. These might be almost flat after the hit of some stone. With the time, these flat stones becomes degradated with further craking.

2) The bottom of the craters: Endurance, Victoria, Beagle and some degree of Eagle are covered by sand originated by the wind deposition. I think that these sand of very fine grain and they are dangerous for MER-X

3) Beagle as Endurance Crater has showed the striped lines (Endurance has more ones since it has greater depth than Beagle). The case of Beagle, it has few strips of sedimentation and hope to learn about what kind of deposition: water, wind, sand, etc.

Rodolfo

Well done, Nirgal! Very "true colorish" We clearly see two basic rock types: dark and light toned. The dark toned rocks haven't been seen since Endurance's Burns Cliff, so I hope we give the ones here a good look.

I agree. Hit the "auto" color/balance feature on Photoshop and you'll see what your brain eventually sees after a long time. If you spend hours at a time building or retouching a color-shifted photo you start to believe that it looks fine. Then activate the auto color feature and it "wakes" your brain out of the illusion. (Disclosure: none of my final products ever include an "auto balance" but it is useful in pointing you in the right direction for final adjustments.)

When I lived in Southern California in the 1970s we had some really huge brush fires that covered the entire LA Basin in smoke and the Sun looked like a dim orange circle. First thing in the morning the entire world seemed to be lit with a grayish-orange hue. After an hour or so you wouldn't notice it. I suspect the same effect would be apparent on Mars.

I'm sorry, but the more I look at Beagle Crater the more it looks like this cheese I tasted recently called Guinness Cheese:

http://springbankcheese.ca/catalog/index.p...th/1_4_45_70_59

Well if the Moon is made of cheese (Wensleydale wasn't it?) then why not Mars? The thought of Guiness flowing between the rocks would certainly generate more interest in future missions. Might make a good site for the next UMSF BBQ as well!

OK back to serious discussion.

Castor

I must admit I was thinking of black pudding... why not both?

Beuargh!

Hail the French food

So, stop discussing about food


I have made this color MI by using pancam color pic. This RAT was made on sol 893:



Here is the tool after (or before) the brush:
Click to view attachment

And the work space :
Click to view attachment

I've been wondering exactly the same thing. My sense is that the apron/sand sheet towards the southeast of our current location, ie the most direct route to the (NW corner of) Victoria, is free of large ripples. There clearly are sizable ripples towards our south, but I see no reason for us to head directly south next.

Here's evidence for my claim. This first attachment shows the view to the southeast on sol 833:
Click to view attachment
The next view is to the SE (towards Victoria) from the current location (sol 896):
Click to view attachment
Both views are at nearly the same local time (noon). It's pretty clear that if there were sizable ripples towards Victoria, they should be visible, as they were on sol 833.

QUOTE (Joffan @ Aug 2 2006, 07:07 PM)

I must admit I was thinking of black pudding... why not both?

May be you've noticed that my first reaction seeing Beagle interior was : it looks hand made! That's consistant to what You and Castor are saying.

QUOTE (ElkGroveDan @ Aug 2 2006, 05:49 PM)

I agree. Hit the "auto" color/balance feature on Photoshop and you'll see what your brain eventually sees after a long time. If you spend hours at a time building or retouching a color-shifted photo you start to believe that it looks fine. Then activate the auto color feature and it "wakes" your brain out of the illusion. (Disclosure: none of my final products ever include an "auto balance" but it is useful in pointing you in the right direction for final adjustments.)
When I lived in Southern California in the 1970s we had some really huge brush fires that covered the entire LA Basin in smoke and the Sun looked like a dim orange circle. First thing in the morning the entire world seemed to be lit with a grayish-orange hue. After an hour or so you wouldn't notice it. I suspect the same effect would be apparent on Mars.

I agree on what you say. Human brain is set to feel "differences" not absolutes.
As a matter of fact, I listened the radio this morning; they talked about this concept not only for the view but also for the taste. It was an emission about french cooking and the discussion was about how to increase differences within a meal so your brain is more pleased.
By giving this exemple I guess I'll please both the one that are here talking of color-shifted and the one that discuss of black-pudding & Guiness cheese.

I am transparent or ...?
There are two or three post I made and no reactions... My images are so bad?

Sometimes happens...
Anyway, I see you... ants are little but not transparent!
(nice coulored MI, I see a rainbow too!)

TROP belles, surtout le MI...

QUOTE (Bill Harris @ Aug 2 2006, 02:57 PM)

I may be wrong, but it "sho does look like a duck"...

Lucky we made it to Eagle first and not to Beagle.
Steve would have still say "a hole in one" ...but an Eagle is better than a Duck

One thing we can gain by getting into Beagle is the chance to examine a crater-bottom drift from the safety of a rocky platform. Oppy retreated from the most interesting areas of the ripples at the bottom of Endurance, and Victoria's central sands are likely to be similarly inaccessible. Beagle has just enough size to hold rippled sand but is compact enough that maybe Opportunity could reach out and peer deep into parts of the field.

It might be accessible, as you say, but since sand (or dust or whatever this is) is mobile, it's not going to be very different in the crater than it's been elswhere. Only id multispectral imaging or TES suggests a different composition is it worth looking at.

Phil

Beagle's outside the landing ellipse! NASA's aim is better